Tory Taylor Wins Ray Guy Award
IOWA CITY, Iowa: The 2023 Ray Guy Award for the best collegiate punter in the country goes to Tory Taylor, a senior at the University of Iowa. The announcement came from the Augusta Sports Council on Friday.
Taylor wins the Ray Guy Award, becoming the first Hawkeye to do so. In 2000, the Augusta Sports Council started recognizing the best punter. Taylor is the second Australian native from Melbourne to win the esteemed prize in a row (Adam Korsak, Rutgers).
Last month, the coaches and media selected Taylor (6-foot-4, 232 pounds) as the Eddleman-Fields Big Ten Punter of the Year and first-team All-Big Ten. In the course of the regular season, he was named to Ray’s 8 five times, the Ray Guy National Punter of the Week on October 24, and the Big Ten Special Teams Player of the Week three times (on October 9, October 16, and November 20).
As a senior, Taylor was named a first-team All-American by CBS (unanimous), The Athletic, and Sports Illustrated. She was also a semifinalist for the Ray Guy Award in 2020 and 2021. Daniel Sepulveda of Baylor currently holds the NCAA record for career punting average (42.5), which Taylor (46.2) will break at the end of his collegiate career. Taylor has scored 40 yards or more on average in
For the third straight year, Taylor broke Iowa’s single-season punting yardage record in the 2023 campaign. With an NCAA-best 86 punts for 4,119 yards, he leads the Big Ten and ranks third nationally with a 47.9 average. Thirty-six of his punts have gone fifty yards or more (six of them have gone sixty yards or more), twenty-seven have been fair caught, thirty have been downed inside the twenty, eleven inside the ten, and six inside the five. His opponents average just 8.8 yards per return, and he has only six touchbacks.
During the Week 12 victory over Illinois, Taylor broke the career punting record for Iowa. At the conclusion of the season, his 46.2 career average will surpass Jason Baker’s record, and he has 288 punts for 13,297 yards, both school records. This season, Taylor has punted six times in 11 of 13 games and at least seven times in seven of them. At Penn State, he tied a personal record with ten punt returns, and his game average of 52.3 yards set a career high.
In the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Florida, on January 1, 2024, the No. 17 Hawkeyes will take on the No. 21 Tennessee Volunteers. ABC will broadcast the game, which is scheduled to begin at noon (CT).
